On Sunday 18 October 2026, a drone struck a transport truck in Al-Dibab, West Kordofan, and a second strike then hit the same spot. The UN Human Rights Office recorded at least 139 people killed and dozens injured in that “double tap” attack in an area held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The office’s wider count: at least 306 people killed by drone strikes in the first three weeks of October alone, across Kordofan, Darfur, Blue Nile, Khartoum and other states.<\/p>\n
Those numbers pose a practical question for everyone working to end Sudan’s war. How can a truce hold when the deadliest weapon in this conflict operates from the air, far from the front lines, and is hard to attribute and verify? My argument is simple. Any humanitarian truce in Sudan has to start in the sky. The first test of both parties’ seriousness should be a verifiable commitment to stop striking markets, displacement sites, health facilities, power stations and water sources, backed by an independent mechanism that records and verifies harm to civilians.<\/p>\n
Over the past year drones have become the weapon that defines this war. In June 2026, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T\u00fcrk told the Human Rights Council that drone strikes had killed more than 1,000 civilians in the first five months of the year. The same month, the conflict monitor ACLED described Sudan’s war as a drone-dominated conflict, with both sides in a constant race to adapt their technology and tactics, “even to the point of some drone-on-drone combat”, as Al Jazeera reported.<\/p>\n
In his statement of 23 October, T\u00fcrk said drones now account for the majority of conflict-related civilian deaths in Sudan this year. His office also documented a cycle of retaliation between cities. It reported that RSF-attributed strikes on Khartoum, including the airport area, appeared to respond to alleged Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) air strikes on Nyala in South Darfur.<\/p>\n
The documented record shows harm coming from both directions. According to the UN Human Rights Office, SAF-attributed strikes on shelters for displaced people in Ghubeish and El Nuhud, West Kordofan, killed at least 25 civilians between 6 and 10 October. On 9 October an RSF-attributed drone hit displaced people working in artisanal gold mining near a displacement site in Abu Shendi, Blue Nile, killing at least 31, most of them women and children. On 11 October an RSF-attributed strike put Um Darfa hospital in Blue Nile out of service.<\/p>\n
The incidents continued after the UN reporting period. M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) said an SAF drone strike hit a busy market in Nyala on the evening of 26 October, and noted reported RSF strikes on electricity infrastructure in Khartoum, Al Jazirah, Gedaref, Sennar and White Nile states. The next day much of the capital lost power for more than twelve hours after a strike on the Al-Markhiyat substation in Omdurman, which an electricity company official attributed to the RSF, according to the Associated Press. In Kordofan, the Kordofan Observatory reported an army drone strike on a civilian vehicle near Ankoush on 17 October that killed four people travelling to seek medical care and buy basic goods, Sudan Tribune reported.<\/p>\n
The Nyala strike shows how hard it is to establish facts in cities cut off from independent reporting. The rights group Emergency Lawyers said more than 100 people were killed and 113 injured, many of them women and children. MSF said the Nyala Teaching Hospital it supports received 36 bodies, 21 of them in civilian clothing, and that its teams saw more than 150 wounded. The Sudan Doctors Network gave a lower toll of 21 dead and more than 40 injured, citing difficulties in verification. A spokesperson for the Special Operations Forces fighting alongside the army wrote that the strike killed more than 150 “militia recruits” at the Dumaya camp west of the city, calling it “precise and targeted”. AP could not independently verify any of these figures.<\/p>\n
Witnesses told AP that civilians, including women selling tea and food, had gathered to sell to fighters, as unemployment pushes people to trade wherever buyers are. This is exactly where international humanitarian law matters most. Fighters in a crowded place oblige the attacker to apply distinction, precaution and proportionality, and oblige the other side to avoid placing forces among civilians. On the strikes on gold-mining areas, the UN Human Rights Office recalled that an object’s financial contribution to the war effort is not by itself sufficient to make it a military objective.<\/p>\n
Sudan’s mediation record is long and disappointing. In Jeddah the parties signed a declaration on protecting civilians on 11 May 2023 and a short ceasefire on 20 May; it did not hold. A planned IGAD meeting between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo never took place, and a document of principles initialled in Manama in January 2024 went no further. In Switzerland in August 2024, the absence of one party prevented direct ceasefire talks.<\/p>\n
In September 2025 the Quad proposed a roadmap starting with a three-month humanitarian truce. According to Asharq Al-Awsat, citing Reuters, the army-led government accepted most of a US proposal for a 90-day truce, rejected a clause limiting the RSF’s withdrawal to specified areas, and demanded withdrawal from all cities the RSF had seized; the RSF welcomed the proposal. On 23 September 2026 the Quad and the Quintet met together for the first time in New York, co-chaired by the African Union and the United States. They called for a humanitarian truce and agreed to coordinate on civilian protection and to prepare to monitor and verify any agreement, without announcing a deal with either party.<\/p>\n
Researchers offer two complementary explanations. Rosalind Marsden of Chatham House argued that both sides’ hope of military victory was the main reason the Switzerland talks failed. Hubert Kinkoh, also at Chatham House, wrote in February 2026 that the multiplicity of mediation tracks and weak coordination among them allowed both parties to resist serious concessions.<\/p>\n
Three main readings of the drone question compete. The military reading comes from both parties, each describing its strikes as aimed at military targets, as the “precise” description of the Nyala strike shows. The humanitarian reading comes from medical organisations; MSF’s coordinator in Nyala asked why markets, where people buy food, are being hit. The human rights reading comes from the High Commissioner, who urged peace efforts to address the influx of arms fuelling the conflict and to end transfers of weapons used in manifest disregard of humanitarian law. In September the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan reported that external support, including weapons and personnel, was fuelling the fighting on both sides.<\/p>\n
All three readings point the same way: while each side can strike deep into the other’s territory, one strike and one reprisal can break any truce.<\/p>\n
The impact of drones reaches far beyond the dead and wounded. When a substation in Omdurman is hit, water pumps and bakeries stop and hospitals run on generators. When a market in Nyala is hit, people lose access to food in a city where the share of children treated for severe acute malnutrition rose from 5 to 11 per cent between January and August, according to UN figures reported by AP. On 9 October the WHO warned of severe shortages of food, water and health care in Tawila, Darfur, which hosts more than 700,000 displaced people, while only 23 per cent of its 2026 Sudan appeal was funded.<\/p>\n
MSF reported in February that its teams treated 167 patients with penetrating injuries, some from drone shrapnel, in just two weeks, and that strikes had forced it to withdraw from Kornoi in North Darfur.<\/p>\n
Four practical steps could begin now, ahead of a comprehensive deal:<\/p>\n
The truce Sudanese people are waiting for will be measured by what changes in daily life: a woman going to the market and coming home, a hospital that keeps its lights on, displaced families sleeping without fear of the engine noise overhead. Drones are where both parties’ commitment to protecting civilians is tested today. If mediators and the parties agree to keep the sky away from markets, hospitals and displacement sites, the road to a full ceasefire becomes shorter, and accountability for every violation, by any party, becomes possible.<\/p>\n
Drone strikes killed at least 306 people in Sudan in three weeks of October 2026, according to the UN. Any humanitarian truce should begin with a verifiable commitment to keep markets, displacement sites and hospitals out of the line of fire from the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-65","ay_column","type-ay_column","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t